What is the value of a liberal arts education?
College students learn so much during their undergraduate years, and they acquire so many skills in coursework, sports, and other campus activities. But how does it all come together? Transcripts only tell a fraction of the story, and this may reflect a larger truth: legacy systems and services that no longer fit Higher Education in the 21st century. How do today’s students understand their intellectual growth as they go, and how can they communicate the value of their journey to advisors, employers, and graduate schools?
To answer these questions, we led a cohort of professors, administrators, and students at a top liberal arts college through a long-format program sponsored by the Dean of the College. This six-month program included 2 projects. We completed the first one, which targeted a facet of the admissions process, during our intensive 3-day kick-off workshop. Then, using the skills our participants developed during this first workshop, we set to our main task of helping students to design and communicate their own intellectual trajectory, over their four years of undergraduate life and beyond.
We started by learning from the people involved. In this case, that meant first going out and spending time with students — talking to students and observing their behavior. Then we worked with our teams of participants to unpack their human-centered research. We started to notice patterns that pointed to 5 different perspectives into this question. From those different perspectives we imagined outside-the-box new systems, services, and activities based on our enriched understanding of what was actually happening. We tested them out and made them better by seeing which solutions the students actually used, how they used the solutions, and which solutions could be even better if spun out to other parts of the college community.
Our program participants left with 5 new solutions, a drawing board full of new questions to address, and a broad repertoire of deep skills that they have brought to bear on new problems, big and small.
What participants took from the experience is reflected in their comments:
“I liked the focus on community, collaboration, creativity, and play.”
“I liked the sequential approach — breaking the process down and focusing on each separately then putting it together.”
“I liked being reminded to replace assumptions about our users with actual fieldwork.”
“I learned what Design Thinking is like in practice.”
“I learned what a good idea-generating session REALLY looks like.”
“I learned that I can be more creative in teams than I thought.”
“I wish I could do this entire workshop around designing a course/teaching.”
